A behind-the-scenes look at Forest City's big deal on Long Island

Newsdaytakes a close look at how Forest City Ratner Cos., the New York outpost of Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises Inc., won the big contract to redevelop Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.It apparently involved a lot of food.From the story:Every Tuesday and Thursday for the last month, Forest City Ratner Cos. executive Jim Lester and two colleagues spent up to 10 hours at a conference table in the Nassau County offices in Mineola, eating wraps and macaroni salad and negotiating his company's contract to redevelop Nassau Coliseum and the plaza around it.Across the table sat two lawyers hired to get the best deal possible for Nassau. They poked and prodded, asking for better terms on everything from who paid for capital improvements to how much the county would get before construction even began.The last negotiating stretch “lasted about four weeks, ultimately ending with last week's announcement that Forest City Ratner won the bid with a final lease that gives Nassau County 8 percent of all gross revenue,” the newspaper notes. “In the end, it was the financial impact on the county that became the deciding factor, officials said.”But it was among the tougher negotiations for developer Bruce Ratner, who heads Forest City Ratner.“This was not easy,” he tells Newsday.

Turns out there's no stopping former Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon, who is “back with a vengeance and prowling Ohio's Utica shale,” according to this story from Forbes.com.

The wildcatting landman “has tapped his deep-pocketed pals and raised $1 billion to buy up at least 50,000 acres (and perhaps more than 70,000 acres) in Ohio's Utica shale,” Forbes.com says. According to a story in Upstream, Mr. McClendon's American Energy Partners “put up the high bid for 50,000 acres offered by Shell in the Ohio portion of the Utica,” the website notes. (A Shell spokeswoman says the company has no comment to add to the speculation and rumors.)Mr. McClendon “is also thought to have acquired 22,000 acres of Utica acreage from EnerVest, one of Chesapeake's partners in Ohio, for more than $250 million,” Forbes.com reports. EnerVest disclosed the deal but did not mention Mr. McClendon or American Energy Partners.In an email for Forbes.com, Mr. McClendon declined to confirm, deny or comment on the reports. “No sir, I am merely a small businessman and private citizen these days!” he wrote.

Bloomberg reports that Nestle, which is building a $53 million R&D center in Solon, “needs to reignite sales that have disappointed investors for four straight quarters,” and one solution is to get smaller.The maker of Nescafe coffee and DiGiorno pizza is “actively looking” at its 8,000 brands and is seeking to identify the laggards after posting its weakest quarterly revenue growth in four years,” according to Bloomberg. Nestle “has said it will struggle this year to meet its long-term forecast for annual sales growth of 5 percent to 6 percent, hurt by a deceleration in emerging markets, European weakness and sluggish performances from its diet products, water and frozen entrees,” the news service reports.Nestle's frozen food unit, in particular, has come under pressure “because of a growing perception among U.S. consumers that frozen meals are less healthy than fresh fare.”Nestle “has responded by banding together with frozen-food makers like ConAgra Foods Inc. to improve the perception of their products,” and it's counting on the Solon R&D center to come up with popular innovations.

Northeast Ohio landlord/blogger Bert Stratton weighs in with a New York Times op-ed piece about the joys of his unglamorous family business.Here's how Mr. Stratton starts:Good news: unemployment fell to 7.4 percent in July — the lowest level since the end of 2008. But there's bad news, too: most of the new jobs were low-wage, in retail and restaurants. They're not the jobs that people want. I should know. No one wants my job, either. At least, nobody in my family.

I'm a landlord. It isn't very glamorous. I just got a call: “There's a smell of urine in the front of my apartment. Something is leaking from above.”But at least it's pretty lucrative and stable. That's what I tell my 32-year-old son, a recently minted lawyer. “Come on, Son, make the rounds with me.” He has taught English in Korea; he has been a newspaper reporter; he has passed the Ohio bar. But things are tough out there; right now he's an hourly contract worker at a big law firm.His other son is 25 and a musician in a band called Vulfpeck in Los Angeles. Neither son wants to be a landlord.Mr. Stratton notes that his father's properties were prewar buildings in Lakewood. He started the business in 1965 and “I kept it going and expanded it,” Mr. Stratton writes.He concludes this way:At different times, I've had my sons cleaning halls and collecting rent. They asked, “I went to college for this?”Quite possibly. I did.I'm a proud dad; my sons will probably be big successes. But I can't help hoping at least one of them comes back to the family business. Unemployment is down, but underemployment isn't.You also can follow me on Twitter for more news about business and Northeast Ohio.

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